I was going to post aboot A3 and how it seems rushed and fail and colorless. I love the arma series. I love it because it tries to be realistic. You run and jump realistically (ie don't jump at all.) I love it because the map(singular) is huge... lol. And I love it most of all because most call of duty players don't.
Now behind all that love is a wall. A wall I have built to hold back the rage and hatred I hold for the game(sim) in secrecy. The AI is loathsome. No other game has the contrast between enemy accuracy and path-finding ability so widely stretched. The AI thread on Bohimia's site is filled with hundreds of posts complaining how the AI has killed them from 1000 meters out from a helicopter while they were running through a wood. It is also filled with posts by me expressing the ... disappointment with Ai path-finding and utter retardation that the AI seem to possess.
Example. I have 20 AI soldiers and or 8 AI tanks (I roll armor). I give a command to all my AI to go to Chernogorsk. What they do now is try to go in number order. And I don't mean try. I mean they take all FUC__NG DAY to shuffle around and proceed at a slow pace to where I point them in order.
That means literally 8-9 mnutes to go from this
To this
You can get around this by selecting every AI or AI driver and individually sending them to a destination. But that is more work for me and doesn't guarantee they show up at the same time which strategically, is a real problem. So usually I have to send them just outside a town and hope they aren't picked off one by one on the way there because they will spread out 200-500 meters apart.
So now that AI is dealt with lets get on the the VR engine. I HATE IT. LOD may as well phone it in. Tests have been run to show it is usually a disk problem and you need a fast hard drive to remove the LOD lag. Not just fast, a damned RAM-DISK.. The word optimization must not translate into Czech very well as they haven't done it. Server instability creeps up over a few hours and starts breaking things. The lack of real physics make vehicles a joke. And even with a 9 mile by 9 mile map flying a jet at realistic speeds means constant circles.
The last complaint Ill dish out is the desaturated color spectrum the series is progressing too. Arma 1 was OK, Palm trees and white sands, green forests and blue sky.
Arma 2 is set in the fall in a Bulgarian country. So dull may be the case but I doubt no vibrant color exists in all the country. Its a sepia filter over earth tones. I have even seen a user made patch to apply to OA that removes the exaggerated color correction but why it is there in the first place is beyond me.
Now Arma3 gets some screenshots released and I swear I don't even see the sun. Was it stormy in this shot? I can't tell.
Sounds are good, effects are good after some modding. The games controls are sometimes un-responsive but also completely customizable. Me being an arrow keys man I customize every key on most games but Arma2 is a special challenge with double tap, hold and modifier keys. Not to mention my wheel and pedals and joystick get involved. Using my gas pedal to run/walk based on how far I push it frees up some keys.. And Outerra needs analog movement support!!
FOV is also infinitely adjustable so going triplehead can be an exciting event more-so then other FPS. It does screw up many elements of the UI such as the compass but I am sure a mod could correct this.
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So.. 13 months from now will I buy arma3. It is entirely dependent on the arma mod community and the state of OT. Even a tatra and a pistol vs bunny rabbits and moose makes a superior military sim to all of arma as long as it is in Outerra.
